According to recent reports after three years of research, in approximately 25 years, fresh water may be very scarce. Studies indicated that the entire world's population may go thirsty by 2040. Remarkably by 2020, between 30 and 40 percent of the world's population could be adversely affected by water shortages.
International water shortages now are commonly being experienced where ongoing demands continue for agriculture and manufactured goods to necessitate an ever growing population. This valuable water resource is rapidly diminishing due to ongoing worldwide droughts and the global pollution of lakes, rivers and our oceans.
Due to looming shortages, waste water recycling for manufacturing could become extremely important, not only for environmental aspects, but also to the rising costs associated with waste water treatment and water handling.
Over the years a wide variety of processes have been developed to perform waste water treatment. Typically most waste water treatment methods rely on chemical clarifiers, filters or filtration by membranes to separate contaminates or their sub-constituents from a waste water stream. Filters and membranes provide micron or submicron filtration and are commonly used to remove chemicals, salts, metals and aquatic microorganisms. U.S. Pat. No. 7,815,804 B2 to Nagghapan, is an example of a filter and membrane system which are combined and used in the treatment of a waste water stream. Nagghapan teaches the use of ion exchange followed by a filtration and membrane process to remove total suspended solids, (TSS) and total dissolved solids, (TDS) from the fluid.
Both filtration and membrane systems rely on pumps to move and push fluid through the filtration system. Contaminate volume is typically based on milligrams per liter, (mg/l) and where the life span of the filter or membrane system can be determined by the contaminate levels and to the volume of water being subjected to the filtration process. Most filters and membrane processes are maintenance intensive and are costly to replace.
Waste water treatment can also include the use of chemicals for the removal of organics and the neutralization of some types of inorganic contaminate. However the downfall of chemical treatment is the tradeoff between the treatments of harmful inorganics in exchange for potential harmful chemicals. U.S. Pat. No. 4,035,289A to Guillerme, Gratacos, Siruins and Tramier teach a method to flocculate organics with chemical agents and then the acidification of the effluent for pH balancing. Chemical treatments typically require time for activation to produce a desirable treatment result.
Electrocoagulation processes are commonly used in the treatment of waste water. Electrocoagulation involves the use of electrical current being applied to an anode and cathode and where molecular compounds can be disassociated or oxidized by means of current transfer within the influent. As for example in electrolysis, molecular disassociation of H2O takes place once 1.24 volts has been applied to an anode and cathode, this method breaks down the water molecule to produce both hydrogen and oxygen which forms a gaseous vapor consisting of micro bubbles.
Similar to water, other bi-polar molecular compounds can be disassociated by applying voltage to a waste water stream; See for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_polarity.
The waste water performs the duties of an electrolyte for voltage transfer between an anode and cathode, and where electro-negative or bi-polar molecules electrically react with the inputted voltage.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,035,289A to Huang, Huang, Lee and Lin teach the method of electrolytic compound reductions using ferric ions to improve a fluidized carrier, and thus a high proportion of iron (III) to iron (II) can be sustained in the system to purify waste water. However, this method requires the continual addition of hydrogen peroxide to the influent for the treatment process.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,766A to Watanabe and Nojiri teach a method where waste water is subjected to electrolysis within an electrolytic cell having an anode comprising as insoluble central electrode and where a body of iron particulate is disposed therearound and in electrical contact therewith, whereby impurities in the waste water become occluded within a flocculation of iron hydroxide formed by electrolytic dissolution of the iron pieces, and the flocculation containing the impurities is subjected to oxidation processing and is thereafter separated. A magnetic field can be applied to the waste water thus treated to thereby promote sedimentation of the flocculation.
China patent CN 103266330A discloses an electrolysis process utilizing a plurality of bipolar membranes within a series of tanks. The bipolar membrane polar distance electrolysis tank comprises a plurality of unit electrolysis tanks and semi-unit electrolysis tanks at two ends, an ion membrane and a sealing gasket being arranged among the plurality of unit electrolysis tanks and between the unit electrolysis tanks and the semi-unit electrolysis tanks, each of the unit electrolysis tanks comprising four frames (1), an anode chamber (2) and a cathode chamber (3) are arranged in the four frames (1), the anode disc (2.1) of the anode chamber (2) and the cathode disc (3.1) of the cathode chamber (3) are buckled on the four frames (1) in a back-to-back manner, an anode gas-liquid separation box (2.4) is arranged in the anode chamber (2), and a cathode gas-liquid separation box (3.4) is arranged in the cathode chamber (3).